Monday, April 7, 2008

AFI Dallas filmmaker interview: Parts director Scott Hanson

By John P. Meyer

courtesy Scott Hanson

Filmmaker Scott Hanson

As we join the conversation, Scott Hanson is talking about the Thursday night (April 3) premiere of his short film, Parts, at the Magnolia Theater as part of the AFI Dallas Shorts Competition program.

Scott is a Dallasite and has a lot of good things to say about the local film community. Of course, he's only made this one film here (a 20-minute short, about a family living on the edge of poverty who suddenly find themselves with another mouth to feed), but you get the impression from talking to him that it won't be the last.

courtesy Scott Hanson

Screenwriter Ken Kloser

Scott's associate, Ken Kloser, co-wrote the screen treatment and also appears (vocally) in this audio interview. They accomplished the writing of their script by passing drafts back and forth via email - it had to be done this way, since Kloser lives in far-off Milwaukee.

The podcast runs just under 22 minutes (which is two minutes longer than their film, it turns out), during which you'll discover the following, and more:

* Scott and Ken met in film school at Boston University

* The story for Parts came from a newspaper article that struck Scott as worthy of pursuing

* They shot the film over the July 4th weekend here in Dallas - in a warehouse without electricity or air conditioning

* They consider it pretty dang cool that their film's premier occurred here in Dallas (they'd submitted it to other festivals as well)

* They are developing other scripts of feature length, and hoping that Parts will stand as evidence of their ability to make a quality motion picture

* They cut about a third of the dialog that had been written for the film during the production process

* The best and worst things about making a film on a small budget

* Their next film is likely to be a comedy.

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